The Courtship of a Goddess

My name is Tom. My last name is Jefferson. Please spare me the routine. I've heard them all, believe me. My mother really wanted me to go by Thomas and was crushed when I began insisting on Tom, but I was tired of all the ribbing.

I am 42 years ancient. Until a miracle happened a few months ago, I was miserably single. I had pretty much resigned myself to bachelorhood when I met Samantha. This is the story of our courtship, the improbable courtship of a geeky middle-aged wimp and a beautiful 28-year-old blonde goddess, and the miracle that bound us together. Literally.

First, let me tell you about myself and my history. It's really boring, I know, but you won't really understand what a bombshell Samantha was in my life if you don't know how miserable and alone I was before.

To put it bluntly, I'm a geek. I'm a nerd, a social incompetent. I almost always was, too. I'm not really bad looking, but I'm awkward and I don't carry myself well. For instance, I'm very tall, 6'5", but I'm useless at sports. Too clumsy. I'm also extremely thin and frail, though lately that's changing.

I wear glasses, of course, and I'm extremely studious. I'm an engineer for Boeing. My work is really my life, or has been. Sometimes I'll work all night on a particularly tricky problem, trying to come up with a solution. Most people just use technology and have no real appreciation of how truly difficult the design and engineering is.

My lack of social skills isn't all my fault. My father was a Colonel in the Army. Our home was run like a military camp. Order and formality were the rules. At school when the other boys would be running and playing and pulling the girl's pony tails, I'd be inside helping the teacher dust the erasers and wash the blackboard. Needless to say that didn't help my social standing.

Just before high school my dad got a promotion of some sort and we had to move to Brussels, Belgium. We thought it was going to be for a year, but it turned out to be just six months. Then we were in Spain for four months, and then we moved to Washington, D.C. for almost a full year. It continued like that all during my high school years. We moved eight times in those four years, including my senior year, just three months prior to graduation. I had to graduate with a bunch of strangers.

I'm not blaming everything on my dad. He was a good man, a very good man. He loved me and cared for me, but we were never very close. I could never discuss something intimate with him, something like my social troubles. Besides, he would have just ordered me to ask a girl out or something, not advise me on how to do it.